Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast with me, Steve Richards.

Thank you for tuning in wherever you are. And you know what I'm going to say? We have got a lot to cram in in our time together. For those of you who missed it, there was a second one last week. It's usually once a week, but there was a second one because we needed another question time and there were so many themes

whirling around for us to reflect on. And there might be this week. I made a pledge last week.

I'm not making a pledge, but there might be, depending on how question time goes in this podcast

and whether we all need to get together after the spending review announcement on Wednesday from Rachel Reeves,

a big moment for this government and politics generally. So the only way to make sure you get it

is to subscribe and then you get it automatically. So please do that and tell your friends and

family, just subscribe to this one. This is where we delve deep and make sense of it all.

If it's okay with all of you, I'm going to reflect on the significance of the spending review

and the importance, obviously in terms of practical implications, but an opportunity to kind of frame arguments, which even a

government with a landslide doesn't get that often in British politics, but this is a moment.

So I'll be reflecting on that briefly. Before that, just a couple of reflections.

I don't know if even people have been reading the reviews,

the interviews about Sarah Vine's book on a political marriage hers with Michael Gove.

But I found it interesting on a couple of levels, which I think it is worth reflecting on.

One, and of course much the more significant, is the further light it sheds on that Cameron era.

Sarah Beine is the second partner, the second, in this case wife, to write a book. We had a book earlier from Sasha,

God, I forgot her surname suddenly, but you know who I mean, who published her diaries

chronicling the Cameron era, Swire, Sasha Swire, wasn't it? Very readable diaries they were too. And now Sarah

Vine has written a book on partly about herself, her family, her upbringing, but above all

about being married to Michael Gove as he rose up the political hierarchy under Cameron and Osborne.

And the book is interesting because it confirms, in my view, the degree to which, you know,

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